


Orbital Resonance Frequency

by sequence_fairy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Canon, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 20:53:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17009016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: When a star's orbital speed around the galactic centre is greater than that of the part of the spiral arm through which it is passing, then an inner Lindblad resonance occurs. At an inner resonance, a star's orbital speed is increased, moving the star outwards.“What time’s your shuttle in the morning?” Shiro asks. Stilted doesn’t even begin to describe this conversation and Keith already regrets letting Shiro into his room. He should have ignored the knock. He should have spent the night on Ganymede station, where he’d left his warbird docked and where Hunk and his mother would have happily met him for dinner. Lance had asked him to check on the Holts though, and Keith has a hard time saying no to Lance since–well, since.“0800,” Keith says, without inflection. He looks down at his hands, running his thumb along the edge of his fingernails. He can feel Shiro’s gaze like a weight on his shoulders, but he doesn’t look up.“You only just got here,” Shiro says, then, “were you not going to come and see me?”“Thought you’d be busy,” Keith says, looking up. Shiro’s eyes widen at whatever he sees on Keith’s face, and Keith supposes that’s probably fair.





	Orbital Resonance Frequency

**Author's Note:**

> **S8 Spoilers.**
> 
> I make no apologies. Let me work out my shit with fic.

_ I miss you now, what's come over me? _

_ We're hostages of geography _

_ The wait is long, and heavy too _

_ Despite what you're accustomed to _

_ I know that life moves on, that's what scares me so _

_ Have no intentions of letting go _

\- Villains of Circumstance - Queens of the Stone Age

 

It’s late when Shiro comes to see him, and Keith almost doesn’t let him in. He stands in the doorway of the temporary quarters he’s been assigned on base, and watches Shiro decide what he wants to say. After everything they’ve been through, Keith can read every micro-expression that Shiro tries to hide under the practiced facade of his ‘Commander Shirogane’ face.

The silence between them stretches into something brittle but Keith refuses to be the first to speak. Eventually, Shiro lifts his left hand to run it through his hair. The glint of his ring draws Keith’s gaze and something acrid turns over in Keith’s stomach. He hadn’t even been on-world to see it. Bitterness rises in the back of Keith’s throat, and with it comes the usual half-earnest wondering if Shiro had planned it that way on purpose. 

“Keith,” Shiro says finally, pleading, and  _ oh _ , it should not still make Keith’s whole body twang like a struck chord when Shiro says his name like that, but it does. Keith’s eyes snap up to meet his; storm grey against desert twilight. Why Keith ever thought he might have a chance of escaping this visit unscathed is a question for some point (never) in the future when Keith feels like doing some soul-searching. 

“Did you need something, commander?” Keith asks, “it’s late, I have an early shuttle tomorrow.”

“Can I–can I come in?”

“Sure,” Keith answers, mostly for lack of an actual reason to say no, and steps back to let Shiro in. His quarters here are small; just a bed and a desk and a narrow window high up on one wall. It feels more like a prison cell than any actual cell Keith has ever spent time in. There’s no place for Shiro to sit as Keith is using the chair as a shelf and the desk is cluttered with scattered reports and other paperwork. Shiro looks around himself, seemingly disoriented. It’s not a good look on him, Keith thinks, but he doesn’t move to clear off the chair or offer Shiro his bed as a place to sit. 

“It’s good to see you,” Shiro offers.

“You too,” Keith says easily, because it is. It’s always good to see Shiro. Keith crosses his arms over his chest, and leans a hip against the edge of the desk. Shiro stuffs his flesh hand in the pocket of his pants; the Altean one hangs limply at his side. Keith takes a long look. Shiro looks tired. The day to day of Garrison administration must be a drag, Keith decides, ‘cause Shiro’s shoulders are hunched in a way they never used to be. There are lines on his face that weren’t there before and that Keith knows weren’t added simply by the years it’s been since he’s last been this close to Shiro.

“What time’s your shuttle in the morning?” Shiro asks. Stilted doesn’t even begin to describe this conversation and Keith already regrets letting Shiro into his room. He should have ignored the knock. He should have spent the night on Ganymede station, where he’d left his warbird docked and where Hunk and his mother would have happily met him for dinner. Lance had asked him to check on the Holts though, and Keith has a hard time saying no to Lance since–well, since.

“0800,” Keith says, without inflection. He looks down at his hands, running his thumb along the edge of his fingernails. He can feel Shiro’s gaze like a weight on his shoulders, but he doesn’t look up.

“You only just got here,” Shiro says, then, “were you not going to come and see me?”

“Thought you’d be busy,” Keith says, looking up. Shiro’s eyes widen at whatever he sees on Keith’s face, and Keith supposes that’s probably fair. The writhing thing in his gut hasn’t been this close to the surface in years. “Wasn’t sure you wanted to see me, I mean, I didn’t even rate an invite to your wedding.”

A pin drop would be deafening in the silence that follows. Shiro breaks their shared gaze, a flush darkening the tips of his ears. “I, well, uh–” Shiro rubs the back of his neck with this hand.

The glint of his ring catches Keith’s eye again, and Keith wishes he could stop continuing to notice it, for being unable to stop himself from looking at it, for wondering if it’s partner is the same smooth silver that Keith knows is a metal from a moon that orbits the new Daibazaal. Pidge has always been a font of gossip and she’s never stopped reaching out, even when Keith never reaches back.

“I always want to see you, Keith.”

“Could have fooled me,” Keith returns, coolly, fixing his stare at the space just over Shiro’s shoulder. 

“That’s not fair,” Shiro protests. 

“Not fair?” Keith asks, shifting his weight forward to draw himself up to his full height. He’s not as tall as Shiro, nor is he as broad, but he hasn’t spent the intervening years letting himself get soft out in deep space, and Shiro steps back as Keith leans in. “What’s not fair is that you cut me out of your life and didn’t even do the me the service of telling me you were going to do it. I would have understood if you needed some distance, after all the shit we’ve been through, no one would blame you for wanting to set that aside for a while, but to not even tell me, your best friend–” Keith’s voice cracks and he hates himself for it. Emotion clogs his throat, making each word a struggle.

“To not even tell me that you were getting married? That you’d met someone? To go radio-silent for years and then to have the gall to show up at my door tonight like some lost puppy thinking a soft look and a pat on the shoulder will make up for this?” Keith’s chest heaves as he reins in the roil of emotions that spark under his skin. “That’s what’s not fair, Takashi.”  

“Keith, I–”

“Don’t,” Keith says, putting up a hand to stave off whatever apology he knows Shiro is going to try. “There’s nothing I want you to apologize for–”

“I wasn’t going to apologize,” Shiro says, and Keith blinks at him, briefly stunned. “I mean, well, I am not apologizing for falling in love,” Shiro amends, and Keith feels his face tighten as he grits his teeth. Shiro barrels on, “you left, not me.”

“I had to,” Keith retorts, “would you have wanted to stay where you were so obviously not wanted?”     

“Of course you were wanted,” Shiro says, like it’s an acknowledged truth of the universe. Instead of being the bolster Shiro probably thinks it is, all it sounds like to Keith is rehearsed. Keith remembers before, when Shiro’s eyes would soften with his voice, remembers the weight of a hand on his shoulder as a tetherline.  He also remembers anew the way Shiro walled himself away in the lionbond when the Atlas and Voltron became one, remembers the sinking feeling in his chest then, mirrored in the sinking feeling in his gut now. 

“Really? Didn’t feel like it to me,” Keith says, and lets himself slump back to rest against his desk again. “Maybe it was childish of me to think that you and I might’ve had something–” Keith hesitates, unable to pick the right word to describe what he thinks he and Shiro might’ve, should’ve, could’ve had. He makes a noise of frustration, helpless. There isn’t a right word. What they had and what it might have become is ineffable. Keith can’t quantify it, he never could. It isn’t something he could properly put into words. Even the ones he did manage to say, scented with the sizzle of his own flesh, seemed like both too much and not enough.

“It wasn’t childish,” Shio says, so quiet Keith almost misses it.

“Pardon?” 

“It wasn’t childish,” Shiro repeats, firmer this time. Shiro meets Keith’s gaze head-on for the first time since Keith let him in. As usual, Keith is drawn in, pulled into the intensity of the full force of Shiro’s considerable focus. There’s no looking away. Keith couldn’t blink if his life depended on it, and maybe, he thinks, as the prickle of a flush steals down the back of his neck, maybe it does.

“What do you mean?” Keith asks. He’s proud of how steady his voice is, proud that the emotion thickening in his throat doesn’t choke off his words. 

“I thought,” Shiro stops himself, sighs and drops his gaze. Keith watches the fan of Shiro’s lashes against Shiro’s skin. Black as soot, and still improbably full, Keith has imagined gunmetal grey eyes looking up at him through them for years already. He probably will for the rest of his life. Keith wants to amend his previous statement about the unfairness of how Shiro has treated him, because the most unfair thing is not what Shiro did or didn’t do, the most unfair thing is that Keith still loves him, even after all of this.  

“You thought what?” Keith prods, when Shiro doesn’t continue. The pitch of the base’s ventilation system changes, sliding down to the low hum that Keith remembers as the five minute warning before curfew. The more things change, he thinks, the more they stay the same.

“Nothing, never mind.” Shiro rocks back on his heels.

This is dangerous territory, but that’s never stopped him before. Keith ignores the neon signs warning him away. “Tell me.” 

“Why?” Shiro asks, soft. Keith swallows hard and tells himself he is imagining the way Shiro’s eyes follow the movement of his throat. 

“I deserve that much at least,” Keith answers. He won’t beg for an explanation from Shiro, even if he has to bite his tongue to keep himself from doing it. The wait for Shiro to speak is interminable. 

Finally, Shiro exhales, slow and measured. “I thought you didn’t mean it,” he says. Shiro’s eyes fix on a point somewhere above Keith’s head. “I thought you only said it because you were sure you were going to die and it was the only way to break her hold.” It looks like the admission costs him and Shiro’s eyes close as he ducks his head to hide his face. Keith feels the words like a punch to the gut. He has to grip the edge of the desk to keep himself from doubling over in the reeling wake of the admission.

“How–what gave you that impression?” Keith asks before he can think. His voice comes out in a strangled rasp and the scar on his cheek pulls against the movement of his mouth. “Shiro, I–” Keith cuts himself off, brain finally catching up with his mouth.

It’s too late for that now. The band around Shiro’s finger proves that if nothing else. All this conversation is doing is rubbing salt into wounds Keith has kept open for years too long already. Keith gathers himself, steeling his spine to resist the self-inflicted blow he won’t dodge. He sucks in a breath. “Never mind,” he says, voice tight. “It’s fine. Forget I asked.”   

Shiro’s brows draw together in a frown of confusion, and his shoulders hunch forward. After a moment he seems to come to a decision and the tension leaves his shoulders in a wave. Shiro’s face clears, and when he meets Keith’s eyes again, his own are steady. Keith knows what’s coming like he used to know the controls of his lion. Shiro’s own emotions are walled away, shuttered behind the mask of Commander Shirogane.

The respectful distance between them feels like a yawning abyss. Keith wants to throw himself in and find the jagged rocks at the bottom. He wonders if hurling himself against the spines of their unacknowledged history will feel like a benediction or if it’ll just make him bleed out faster than he has been.

“I’ll let you rest. Safe flight tomorrow,” Shiro says, tone carefully detached, and steps back to put more distance between them. Keith aches to reach for him, but he clenches his fists instead, forcing himself to stay rooted in place. Shiro hesitates, and for a moment, Keith thinks Shiro will reach for him instead, but he doesn’t. He lifts his hand, ring a dark line against his skin, and lets himself out of Keith’s quarters. 

The door snicks shut behind Shiro and Keith waits until he hears Shiro’s footsteps fading before he lets himself slump. He won’t be back, Keith thinks, and for a moment he’s not sure if he means himself or Shiro. He shakes himself, and pads over to his bed, flopping down onto his back. Above him, the ceiling is implacable and institutionally grey, and Keith closes his eyes. He has mourned this loss twice already, what’s a third time in the grander scheme of things? At least this time, there’s no false hope and no miracle resurrection in the offing. 

The shuttle will take him back to Ganymede in the morning, and Keith will do his damnedest never to set foot on or around Sol 3 ever again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and chat with me about my fic on [tumblr](http://sequencefairy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Heartbeat Stars (the happy ending remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19143850) by [bootyshortskeef](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bootyshortskeef/pseuds/bootyshortskeef)




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